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Hi, My name is Micah Park Biffle, I am the author of ' A Man's Traveled Heart,' I am a Veteran who found his way back through writing. I consider myself an architect of the imagination. Here you will see my creations come to life. My short stories, poems, my thoughts, and a little touch of my life.

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What Has Reading Become?

Growing up a
lot has changed since I have been born. I was born 1987, near the end of one of
biggest rises in the economy and the massive boost in technology. Internet
became accessible in our homes. It allowed people to start connecting with
other's around the world. To talk about what ever and whenever. Chat rooms
were a huge boost in connections with people, then came video websites. Places
like ebaums world. A website dedicated to whatever videos people wanted to
upload. Then came YouTube. A company that did a better job marketing and
understanding the constant change going on in the world. Soon, Amazon became a
huge success and let us not forget cell phones. Cell phones was a huge change
for the economy and social life. You could now contact friends and family from
practically anywhere you were. It led to what I believe the first major change
in how we saw change in efficiency. No longer did you have to wait to call
someone you wanted to talk to. There was no need any more to wait to get home and use your home phone. Before cell phones and chat rooms, there was no instant connection, instant gratification of
connecting with people. It took time to build relationships over the phone. You couldn't just call and say a few words and hang up and ignore if the person called back. We do that all the time now with texting, we say a few words and if the person responds we can choose to message back or wait. So much now is done out of convenience and efficiency of self.

Lets look at the microwave now, almost instant food upon your demand, no more waiting for the
oven to heat up. It is amazing what technology has done for us and continues to
do for us. But, with everything new and good, also comes bad. I remember as a
kid in elementary school, getting to go to the scholastic book fair at my
school. I wasn’t much of reader, but the
library always had a certain feel to it, there was a certain fascination being surrounded
by books. That was one of the few places at the time, where you could get your
hands on the new books and at a good deal right then and there. Now, at the same time Amazon
was setting up and becoming one of the first major online book stores. It took
some time for people to catch on to the whole online shopping, but now, we love
it. We use it almost daily and can see and shop for anything instantly. The scholastic
book fair was about the most convenient book store you could really get back in
the day. It came right to your library at your school. Now, I don’t know if
they still do those fairs, but if they do, I can only imagine the scale it no
longer is at.

What does
all this have to do with reading becoming obsolete? Well, let’s look at technology
some more and see what it has brought to the ever changing generations. Sadly,
my generation I feel is the least societal addition. Many people in my generation
have grown up with, cell phones, internet, iPad, 1 min meals, massive fast
food, YouTube, and so much more. All these things have brought about the
ability to make things happen almost instantly. You can now watch movies online
without having to go to the video store and hope there is a copy of the new
movie you want to watch. There is no more having to wait for your parents to
get off the phone so you can use the internet. Then, when you did have the
chance to get on, it took about ten minutes just to connect.
YouTube, iTunes, Google Play, all these things bring either music or videos
instantly to your fingertips. There is on more need to go to the store and
listen to CD's and see which one you want. No more waiting for MTV to play your
favorite music video at ten pm at night.

No more
having to wait for your favorite song to hit the radio and hope that you are
home to record it with your cassette player. And man, was it the worst when the
radio host would talk over the intro to your favorite song. There are all these
instant changes to world, to our needs and wants. Whatever we want, we can
pretty much have right away or wait a few days through the mail, instead of
waiting a month.

Books, have
had quite the challenge to keep up with technology. With all this instant technology,
reading is something that can’t be done instantly. The best you can do is get a
synopsis of a book or cliff notes. But there is no way around to getting the details
and understanding the book. There is no way to make reading convenient. With online movie/TV data basis, there is no longer commercials
for many of our favorite TV shows. Leave out commercials and what do you get?
The instant satisfaction of getting to watch your show nonstop. Almost nothing
gets in the way of our chance at seeing and enjoying our favorite things in
life now. Except reading, reading cant be done through watching and shutting off your brain. For me though, reading was always tough. I have always had a hard
time paying attention. So obviously, reading was one of those horribly torturous
things to me. I would skim read just about every book I had to read for school,
book reports sucked. I look back in time, and I see the year I was born in, was only the tip of the iceberg with the change in societal patience.

Now today,
you can pretty much type in any book and someone will have notes online for it.
Allowing you to get just about all the information you need for your report. But
again, that leaves out the experience of reading. Today, I have found what I
enjoy reading and it isn’t the books the school made me read, that’s for sure.
Anyways, with commercials becoming almost obsolete, the need to wait to call someone,
the need to travel to the movie store, the need to wait a month for
your new toy, is no longer around. All these small changes in waiting, kills the need for patience and gratitude. It leaves people open for the endless idea of, now, now, now. So, as you can see, there is a trend here, technology
gets better and our wait times get smaller. And from what I have seen, as technology
progresses the need to wait, having patience, dwindles. People get upset if
they do not see their fast-food in less than five minutes. Or get angry when
their coffee is taking longer than usual and they are running late. It's not
the baristas fault you are going to be late for work.

All these
small but massive changes in technology, I believe has killed our attention
spans. I am even guilty of it at times. Many times I forget where I came from and the
blessings I have in my life with technology and I become impatient. But these
days I have a much improved control over my patience. I am able to catch myself
when I trip up on my attention span. Again, as technology progresses attention
spans decrease. And reading is something where you need a long attention span.
Reading doesn’t come with a skip button or live characters acting out the
complete plot. It takes time, energy, and the willingness to do it. Book stores
shut down for the longest time, now you will see some, but not near as many as
there used to be. You could say all books are now sold online. But can many people
talk about their favorite writer over their favorite musician, actor, actress,
or TV show? Not many, books used to be everywhere, it used to not take a hit
movie for an authors book to become known. You used to see new hit artists
books everywhere. Now, you only see them online or in the few book stores that
are left, and of course the airport.

We have so
much going on in our lives instantly now, that we so often forget about books and
reading. We are too busy posting on Facebook or Instantgram to let everyone
know what we are doing. Rather than absorbing a good story or a good lesson
from a book. I am not saying you have to read to gain knowledge, but the best
knowledge I believe are in books, that and personal experience in life. If I
still have not put the possibility of reading becoming obsolete, or at least extremely
minimal. How about this, there is now short hand for speaking, people say
things like, " That’s tots, (that’s totally cool), or "bae" (
baby). People even mix in short hand text, "2moro, or IDK, (I don’t know).
I use a few short hand text, but every time I catch myself doing it I cringe.
Is it that difficult to write out a whole coherent sentence? What is so
important that taking another five seconds to write will mess things up? If you
can’t talk much, why not just call the person and let them know? But, no one
really calls anymore, it’s almost uncomfortable and seems rude as well.

Cutting
things in half for efficiency can be great, great for business, learning, (If
it still heeds the same amount of results as the original or better.). Even driving can
be another thing to cut in half for efficiency. But again, reading isn’t one of
those acts that you can cut in half. There is no short hand. Imagine if a doctor shorthand
read his whole medical school career. Or your doctor text you that you had
cancer instead of calling you and ask you to come in and be there emotionally? Technology
doesn’t just help us, it can hinder us and make us impatient and blind to what
is really important in the world. I believe reading is one of those. With the drastic
changes in the world that never cease and things taking less time. Presses us to act as
technology does, quick and efficient. I really can’t believe this is a thing, TL; DR,
(Too long didn’t read).

How
impatient can we be that something is too long to read? I can understand if it
is some story you care nothing for and decide not to finish it. But doing
things like this, puts in the idea that it is okay to not complete something or
ignore the information or meaning behind something. It creates this idea that all you have to do is only engage
in what is convenient. Reading and books are two amazing things, without them the world would progress slowly or not at all. There are places where getting the education to read and write is still difficult, just getting the books to learn can be difficult. We so often take for granted what we have now or had.

Reading is
not convenient, nor is it efficient.Nor will it ever be, it is one of the few things in the world that, no matter how much technology changes, it will remain the same.

Well, those are my thoughts on what
reading is becoming. If you have any thoughts feel free to let me know!

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